GSE (GIAC Security Expert)

I haven't posted much recently because the last 6 weeks have been very busy for me.  As I noted earlier, over Labor Day, Sherry & I took a 10 day trip.  Since then, I had a 3-day trip to DC for work, followed by 1 day home and then 10 days in Vegas.  That 10-day trip included 2 days sitting for the GIAC GSE hands-on lab.  The GSE is an interesting certification.  It requires at least 3 other certifications before you are eligible to sit for it.  There is then a 150 question, 3 hour proctored "written" (online multiple choice) exam and if the score on that is high enough you can register for the hands-on lab.  The lab is 2 days of actually demonstrating you can do the things described in the 3 underlying certifications.  I won't go into the exact things covered in the exam, in part because we signed an NDA and ethics pledge before we began the labs, but some of the prep materials describe it in general terms.  Chris Mohan was 1 of the other 8 people who sat with me for the exam.  In his blog, he wrote a nice story about his experience.  I was pretty nervous going in because, with all the travel immediately before, I didn't get to study as much as I would have liked.  The 2 days were long, but at the end of the second day, I was pretty warn out, but my first thought was "I expected it to be worse."  That left me feeling cautiously confident.  One of the hard things was, unlike in previous years (and due to the number of us taking the exam), the results would not be known immediately.  We were told that we would have the results within 30 days.  Fortunately, it didn't take that long.  Last evening, I received the e-mail telling me that I had passed the lab.  The results haven't been posted on the web site yet, but I'm proud to say I am one of at least 24 28 persons who have achieved this elite certification.

The Reds win the pennant! The Reds win the pennant!

Okay, so they actually clinched the NL Central title last Tuesday, but I'm slow getting around to writing this up.  This is a good feeling that we Reds fans haven't had in a while.  After 15 long years, we are back in the playoffs.  They didn't finish off the year quite as strongly as I had hoped (they should have had home field in this round), but Jay Bruce is on fire right now, and the (presumptive) NL MVP Joey Votto has come out of his mini-slump.  I was kind of surprised that it was Cueto rather than Wood in the starting rotation for this round, but with Wood and Bailey both pitching well here at the end of the year, I don't think any of the starters (except perhaps Arroyo) will have a really long leash.  If the good versions of Volquez and Cueto show up, this series against the Phils could really be a pitching duel.  As much as their rotation scares me, we are actually 3-1 against them (Halladay, Coles, and Oswalt).  Plus, the Browns and Buckeyes both won this weekend, so I'm loving life right now.